Attorney General John Gerretsen announced Bélanger’s appointment on Monday.

“In leading the inquiry Justice Bélanger will be asked to look into and report on events surrounding the collapse of the Algo Centre Mall and review the emergency management and response,” Gerretsen said in a statement.

“He will report back publicly within a year of beginning the inquiry.”

Gerretsen emphasized that details are still being worked out on the probe, which Premier Dalton McGuinty pledged on June 29, just six days after the mall’s roof caved in, killing two women.

“The next step in the process is to establish the public inquiry through an order in council. The order sets out the scope of the inquiry,” the attorney general said.

“The government is actively engaged in finalizing the terms of reference and, once approved, will make them available to the public,” he said.

Bélanger, who was appointed to the bench in 1978, served as a senior judge for Eastern Ontario from 1984 until 1990, then as a regional senior justice for the Ontario Court of Justice from 1996 to 2002. He currently sits as a per diem judge.

The June 23 disaster killed Lucie Aylwin, 37, and Doloris Perizzolo, who was in her 70s, and injured many others.

Aylwin was working at a lottery kiosk and Perizzolo was apparently walking by when the roof collapsed on the summer Saturday afternoon.

The Ontario Provincial Police have launched a criminal probe into the collapse and there are also investigations by the chief coroner and the Ministry of Labour.

“I join the residents of Elliot Lake in hope that the independent inquiry will ask the tough questions about the collapse so we can ensure that nobody has to go through what our community experienced,” Mantha said in a statement.

Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark (Leeds-Grenville) said it’s important to get to work soon.

“When you have any tragedy of this magnitude I think, as a legislator, you want those answers for those communities and for all Ontarians as fast as we can,” Clark told reporters at Queen’s Park.

Bélanger has presided over several prominent cases, including Andre Dallaire’s attempted assassination of prime minister Jean Chretien in 1995.

He ruled the knife-wielding Dallaire could not be held criminally responsible for his actions because of his mental state.

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